Immigration reform should begin with a single step: securing the border
By Tom Quiner
Fixing immigration should be easy, but it isn’t.
I have a buddy whose brother-in-law is from a South American country. He wanted to come to the U.S., but unlike millions of undocumented, this guy played by the rules. It took him ten years to get in.
Is it fair for millions to sneak across the border to reap the rewards of living in the U.S. for ten years, while at the same time, law abiders are kept out?
On the other hand, immigration officials looked the other way in the 1970s as cheap labor flooded across the border and took up residence in our cities. In essence, we diluted the rule of law because at that time, businesses were benefitting from cheap Mexican labor.
The signal was sent that, hey, it’s okay to sneak across the U.S. border and the government will wink at you as you stroll in. Millions of these undocumented workers established lives here, had families, started businesses, and attend our churches. They are defacto citizens. It isn’t fair to uproot these people and ship them back from whence they come, because many were born here, and the older ones are more American than Mexican.
Newt Gingrich made this case in the 2012 election cycle. We don’t want to ship back these people who are contributing to American society in terms of blood, sweat, and tears. It’s not fair in light of our willingness to accept their cheap labor when the gettin’ was good, and now that the climate has changed, uproot ’em and expel them.
It is not a moral thing to do.
The Gang of 8 ‘comprehensive’ immigration reform proposed in 2013 eventually imploded because of Democrats’ reticence of securing the border first.
Donald Trump is going to do that. Good. We may not agree on the wall, but the vast majority of Americans agree on the legitimate need of any sovereign nation to control its own borders.
President Trump is rounding up illegal aliens who have committed serious crimes. Good. Who wouldn’t want that, except for the most die-hard leftist?
I hope the president doesn’t overreach and start sweeping up decent people who have established lives here over the decades. Once the border is secured, we need to bring people out of the shadows and create a system of legal residence, not citizenship.
People who live in the shadows are subject to being preyed upon by thugs who know that their victims are afraid to call the police. That’s bad for our country. The time is fast approaching to let these people step back into the light. America will be the better for it.